The moles were able to fetch Arbiter and Cynder two seats for them, enabling the both of them to sit next everyone else. The dragoness went right next to her purple pride and joy, with Yapflop being on the other side of her. That was until the little grunt decided to let Thel sit between him and Cynder. Everyone on the Grunt's side of the table had to make room for them, moving over to the side a bit. With the entire group now fully reunited, Darst decided to comment her armour.
"That's perfectly structured protection you're wearing dear Cynder, you look fantastic" he spoke with a gentlemen type language. Her lips shown a smile.
"Thank you, it means a lot coming from you Darst" she replied.
"I bet all of Yapflop's organs that those moles copied Arbiter's armour markings and stuff to make that, I bet each and every one of them" Jabjab disliked her armour's design, a bit unhappy that it was copied. And placing a bet with Yap's insides.
"Hey! I just want to let you know that I like to keep them inside me thank you" Yapflop held in his chest in place.
"Well you're right Jabjab, they did copy his design and made a dragon version for me" Cynder started explaining, "They looked into his armour when the elites first came to the city and they were very intrigued about how it looked. They didn't tell me much about how they exactly created this but they noticed how much me and Thel spent much time together since we first met, so they must've decided to make me a 'Dragon Arbiter' with this get-up".
Ventor raised a brow and made a low hum, "Hmm...it would be the most logical explanation. I'm surprised the furballs were actually able to copy the markings, it's hard enough for some Sangheili armoury creators to even reprint Arbiter armour from the ages. They have to look off pictures these days" he had a good old chuckle from the last words of his sentence.
Thel was starting notice that his Sangheili brethren seem a lot more happy and peaceful without the fogs of war surrounding their minds. It felt different, and he liked watching the others have conversations like this. It put a graduate smile on his face.
"Well, in any case, it's good to see Thel still up and running as always. How's the chest?" Odesa looked concerned when he noticed the stitches of Thel's chest. No matter how much of his armour was covered up, some of it could still be seen, just like his mark of shame.
"Asides from the common itching of these stitches, I feel renewed and ready for anything. I have to get rid of these tomorrow morning though".
Spyro raised a brow, "But tomorrow morning is the beginning of the battle, you have to go to the infirmary just as it starts?".
"Unfortunately, I have to. Clin said my ribs are fragile to being broken, but they're repairing quickly. Unless I wanted to fight Brutes with them, the stitches have to come out" Thel replied. He knew these people expected him to lead them against Mag's forces. If he was out of action for the time being, who would lead them?
Cyn decided to throw in on her suggestion, "Can't you get them out tonight? or maybe just as the sun's coming up?" she needed him to be by her side, not sitting on a hospital bed while the moles cut and pull small pieces of rope on Arbiter's chest.
"I'm not too sure, he didn't say it was specifically tomorrow morning, so I could persuade him to do it before the rising sun" He steadily sat back on his chair, feeling nice and relaxed.
"Hmph, either way, I'm happy that we're all here together now" Darst finished up his meal, pushing the plate away, "Mmm, that wasn't half bad. I give my appreciation to the moles for serving dinner to us" Kino looked behind him to see the cooks hearing his compliment, bowing in thanks.
"Arbiter sire?" Savarsu wanted to ask his superior something.
"Call me Thel, I'm only called the Arbiter during battle" he insisted.
"Only 85% of the time Arbiter" Cynder smirked.
"Ha ha, she made a funny..." Jabjab sarcastically said whilst pointing at her.
The dragoness turned to him with narrowed down eyes, sending the blunt side of tail tip into the back of his head hitting him with enough force to make him face first into his food. Cyn exposed a satisfied smile and a good row of sharp teeth.
"HA! NOW THAT'S FUNNY! HA HA HA!" Yapflop fell off his chair laughing, holding in his chest and rolled around like an immature little child. This little shenanigan caused everyone else to have either crack up laughing.
A muffled voice could be heard through the pasta, "I hate all of you".
"Ah, that was pretty good, good going" Thel padded Cynder on the shoulder.
"Yeah, I hope we see another one of those soon" Spyro looked at her.
"Don't get your hopes up all purple and glory..." the muffled Jabjab voice spoke once again.
"He he he. Well that was great, but you still haven't answered my question" Savarsu tried to get Thel's attention again.
"Forgive me umm..." Thel has not known the names of the other survivors yet.
"Savarsu Kortul, his name is, he's a good warrior. And these other two are Veartra Mevlos, a former engineer, and Tetrestu Goraared, the last survivor of some 128 elites that were sent down during one of the Ark battles with the Flood. He's the silent type..." Ventor revealed their names to Thel. Cynder also knows their names now.
"It's such an honour, and a pleasure to meet you Thel" Veartra kindly greeted Arby.
"As to you Veartra" Thel spoke like a gentleman to the only female of the survivors. He looked at Tetrestu but since he was the quiet one, Arbiter left him alone to his thoughts. Vadam looked back at Savarsu.
"What was your question warrior?".
"I wanted to know your thoughts about the humans, and our alliance with them" the minor armour wearing Sangheili asked a topic that has never really been talked about since the Ark's destruction.
"That's...an unexpected one" Darst commented in.
"I thought that since Thel fought with the demon and other humans, I'd wanted to know his opinion on them and how our alliance would work out with them" Savarsu explained his reason to everyone.
"Well...if you really want to know, I need to eat something before I say a word, I'm starved" Arby needed some grub to swallow down, having nothing to eat for such a while, and now was the best time.
Ventor passed his plate over, still covered in cooked meat, "Here, you can have mine, I don't want any more".
Thel grabbed the plate and gulped down as much as he could to have a full stomach. Cynder widened her eyes by how quickly he was eating it, she'd have thrown up after the first two pieces. He didn't even chew his food.
A loud burp echoed through the room, "Ah...much better. Now, my opinion on them. The humans are a very strong race, they're capable of many things; commanding ships with disciplined officers, brave and confident troops and nice production line of vehicles. But what strikes me most is that they inherit many cultures" He began telling everyone his throughs about Humanity, detailing aspects of them from what he's seen.
"Whilst we only have one culture streamlined through different methods, they have their own religious beliefs throughout their race, many different ones. They've evolved through massive amounts of technology, and they didn't even need Forerunner tech do get it. Their fighting skills up close are just as good as ours, though we won most close quarter battles with them because we had swords, other fights we lost was just to their shotguns".
"Grr, I hate those things!" Yapflop rudely interrupted.
"Shh!" Spyro shushed him up.
Thel continued, "Still, they're strong and valiant warriors, and they have their own beliefs, unlike what we had during the Covenant. It's no wonder why the Prophets considered them heretics at the start of the war, because of what they knew about the humans at the time. They're military may have been massive, but the war did drastically reduce it to smaller numbers. Same goes with us, though they could've built bigger ships to match with our Assault Carriers...some of them are just too small for my taste".
"Well you know what they always say, the bigger the better" Veartra grinned.
Arbiter smiled at her, "Still, they were decent vessels. Although humanity is a strong willed race, I wouldn't go as far as to say they were totally peaceful...many centuries ago, while the Covenant gained strength, the humans had wars with each other, many more wars that even outnumbered ones we had with each other. Darst, you might have saw this just before We really made first contact with them" He looked directly at Kino.
"Indeed I did" the zealot confirmed this, "a number of human rebels fought the main UNSC army, believing they could free their worlds from the military. I watched one of those battles before we attacked the planet itself" Darst may have been young, but he could remember the small firefight between UNSC soldiers and rebellion fighters.
"Exactly my point" Arby approving it, "I remember one of the senior humans telling me about a large war they had on their own world, a little long before they had achieved colonisation and space travel. A war they called World war 2, and it resulted in 60 million lives lost, military and civilian".
"That must've been bloody...World war 2? there was a number 1?" Cynder was suddenly very curious about human history.
"He didn't tell me anything about that war, it was of a smaller scale, but it must've also been terrible. As good allies as they are, they're motives are...unpredictable...we have control of our governments most of the time, but they don't" Arbiter shook his head, knowing the humans have a very violent past.
"We're no different Thel, I don't think any species is. Evolution through technology tends to get beyond chaotic...resulting is so many deaths that none of us would count that high. We can't always depend on tech forever, we need to survive in harsh conditions sometimes...which to tell you the truth, most young Sangheili never survive, especially how our weather on our homeworld is like" Darst felt the same way.
Cynder also had her part in this for her own kind, "Life has a cruel sense of humour...I don't know about elites, but we dragons learn to adapt quickly to changes, our bodies for example. Weather can take a toll on us, but we survive most effects of it, snow, heat, rain, wind, that kind of stuff. The one thing we can't adapt to is natural disasters...whirlwinds and gale forces, floods and lightning...there's no way to change them. When we're very young, we barely survive any unbalanced weather condition, but we grow up and learn to live with it...but I heard some younglings, even under parents normally never survive bad weather..." Cynder felt saddened by those last few words, the sense of baby dragons dying before they even have a chance at life breaks her heart.
"Hmm...Life is never all too peaceful...even without us, there will still be chaos...but enough of the doom chit chat. I've pretty much answered your question Savarsu. Happy?" Thel smirked cockily.
"I think all of that sums it up, yes" he replied. All of this info was absorbed into everyone's heads, questions lingered on. But for now, it was time for a different subject.
"Say Darst, if you fought from the start to the finish of the Human-Covenant war, did you ever partake in the ground battles of the human world Harvest?" Veartra asked Kino. It took time for him to remember Harvest, but then it all started pooping into his thick skull.
"I do remember Harvest, it was the first planet we really discovered what the humans were capable of, and where we first encountered them. The Brutes were responsible for designating and leading the attack, but it was us and the rest of the Sangheili who really led those troops" he pieced together what he knew about those years.
"Harvest?" Cynder looked at Thel.
"The humans colonised it, expanding their territory from Earth. It was also one of the first human worlds we glassed...that was a big mistake if you ask me" Arby intervened. He remembered many Cruisers and Carriers glassing continents of Harvest, resulting in something they never expected.
"Of course it was, the huge amount of glassing made the planet's atmosphere and climate to change drastically, and it had one of those 'nuclear winter' effects, causing the top layer of the planet to start becoming an wasteland of cold and ice. A quarter of our troops froze solid because of it!" Ventor had known what humans called these organic made weather changes. He doesn't know the science behind climate shifts and nuclear winter, but he knew the effects and consequences because of it.
"Bah, I blame the Hierarchs, they ordered the glassing" Darst pointed the responsibility of Harvest's glassing at the hands of Truth and the rest of the prophets.
"I'm sure the humans will recolonise that world, as well as their other worlds like Reach, Arcadia, Onyx" Thel assured that guilt will not fall upon the elites for what they've done, but Ventor interrupted.
"Didn't you hear? Onyx dispersed into trillions of sentinels. It wasn't a human colony there, it was a large military hideout. More so, it wasn't even a real world, it was a shield world, all of it was solid sentinels. When our fleets got there, a battle between humans and forerunner sentinel forces was already underway. The whole thing ended when some humans detonated nuclear weapons within the world. It caused sentinel forces to disperse. I think the fleet we sent there was wiped out as well. I don't exactly know the full details, you'll have to ask someone else about Onyx" Odesa ran through small parts about battle on Onyx, a shield world fully dominated by sentinel forces of the forerunners. Arbiter seemed quite shocked at that revelation.
"I never heard about that...what was it, some kind of conspiracy battle" he asked the one handed captain, but all he did was shrug his shoulders.
"Hmm...dark times..." Veartra silently spoke.
Cynder was filled with so many questions, too many to count. She's like a news reporter desiring to continuously inquire questions to someone, but she could only narrow them down and ask a few. She felt something poking her neck, turning to its origin and seeing Spyro getting her attention.
"You want this? I'm not that hungry..." he passed over his plate, which still had half of his meaty cuisine on it, still warm and fresh.
Cynder shook her head and slid it back over to him, "No, it's yours. You need it little more than me for tomorrow" she smiled at him, "but thanks anyway".
Spyro was surprised that she passed it back to him, but he wanted her to at least have something tender before they're throw into the fire.
"Cynder, you have to eat. Even before you went outside the city walls yesterday, you haven't bitten into anything. I'm concerned that you're not caring for yourself all that well" he brought his face closer to hers, showing signs of anxiety, feeling a little uneasy about her well being. She looked at him with such a gentle and innocent expression.
"...Ok...if you're that worried, I'll have a little bit" she pulled the plate back to her front with her paws, licking the top piece of meat to taste the warm, sweet and tender taste. All of a sudden, Spyro watched her dug into his food, now feeling the hunger for ripping apart and swallowing the red cooked beef. Arbiter turned swiftly and watched her.
"Whoa...haven't you eaten for a while?" Thel raised a brow, spotting a feral beast inside her.
Cynder gulped down some more food before looking up, "Starvation has been hiding from me all this time, I really need this" she continued to devour all that sat on the plate, but Spyro happily watched her finish up what's left.
"Say, how did the war with this 'Dark Master' begin anyway? I know you two are a bit young to know the full details but exactly who was this individual? How was the war waged? what was his goal?" Ventor wanted to know the dragon's side of things. He didn't know he was in for a bit of their history, but they were both willing to give whatever info was deemed pretty necessary to speak of.
Cynder lifted her head up from the plate, leaving almost nothing left, "Well...the Dark Master's name was...(sighs)" she didn't want to go through with this again, but Spyro gladly filled in.
"His name was Malefor...and the war started with him raising powerful dark army to exterminate all that stood before his wrath. He was the first purple dragon, only born once every ten generations...in those ten generations, his armies killed too many to count" Spyro lowered his down, mourning all those losses, all those innocent people that didn't deserve death at the hands of monsters and creatures.
Ventor was surprisingly interested to hear more of this. A war ravaging on for ten generations is incredibly longer than the Human-Covenant war. And this happened on a single planet.
"How come he was able to raise the army in the first place?" Savarsu asked.
Cyn finally brought up the courage to talk about it, "Purple dragons are supposed to be very powerful, wielding more abilities than what a normal dragon could use...almost any ability".
"The ancestors and guardians before Terrador and everyone else thought Malefor would've become a noble and wise dragon, but instead, he chose evil, defying them and casting the whole world in chaos...with the darkness on his side, he raised his army and set out to destroy all of the dragons and their allies, the moles including" Spyro finished the introduction to how it all began, shocking the elites.
"That's total genocide! How could that beast do such thing?" Veartra was clearly unhappy Malefor had caused all this.
Arbiter turned to the female Sangheili, "Was our war with the humans any different...".
"It was genocide...but that's not all he wanted...he wanted to destroy the world" Cynder sourly whispered, but everyone definitely heard those words.
"Destroy the world? but technology is crap on this planet! How could he make the world go boom?" Yapflop was confused by how anything on this planet can even harm it.
"He didn't use technology, he didn't use weapons of any kind of destruction, he only summoned creatures from deep within the Earth's crust to destroy everything. They're called Golems" Cynder started explaining about the gigantic earth golems.
"We faced one of them numerous times. We barely laid a scratch on it until we made it accidently punch a waterfall and breaking it's left arm off in the process. When we got to Warfang, it was under siege" Spyro filled in the smaller details of their journey. Veartra cut into their talk.
"So that explains the damage we saw around the city. It must've been terrible" she shared concern for the inhabitants of this sandstone metropolis.
"The Golem came back and increased the destruction, but we killed it, quickly and precisely...with some help from the guardians and Hunter" the purple dragon re-imagined the death of the Golem, one foe that both he and the dragoness will never forget
Cynder then started remembering the monster that brought world to its near destruction, "With the Golem defeated...Malefor decided to try and end the world with the Destroyer...oh ancestors, I don't want to remember that thing's face..."
I was gonna post two chapters but I thought that'd take even a bit of a while, so I posted this chapter first. Next one will come sooner or later, not sure. I won't be surprised if you guys don't review and comment, considering how long you've waited for. If so, thanks for waiting so patiently. I hope the story has some value to reading some chapters again and again.
